Author's Notes:

Disorder has been a labor of many months. I started this project in May of this year, and promptly forgot about it when graduation gave way to a difficult job. As you might imagine, my work schedule became very rigorous, and it became almost impossible for me to find time to write.

Eventually, though, I adjusted to the schedule, and started to write again. So far I have finished this brief prologue and drafts of the first three (much longer) chapters. Those of you who read Hunter/Killer will no doubt recognize many of my tropes and crutch words in this piece; but I hope you will also find it refreshingly different. Rest assured I will find a way to work action and comedy into this plot, but the focus of this piece is horror. Not just suspense, not just visceral grotesquery, but true existential horror. Fans of angst and pain will not be disappointed either, for the things that terrify us most are quite emotionally charged.

Before I present my work, allow me to reveal some insecurities. I am not sure that this work will be enjoyable. I have never written horror: I am trying to expand my horizons. I fully intend to scare the crap out of you, but if I fail, I hope I at least do so entertainingly.

I would like to thank Lady Ophelia for her comments on my initial outline of this piece. Alas, she has not had time to beta for the bulk of this work—at least, not yet. As a result, I have turned to wolfschild for my edits and suggestions on this prologue and the chapters I have thus far written. Wolfy, thank you for all your help.

I am posting the first part of this on Halloween because I believe it to be a uniquely suitable date. If that is pretension (it is) then I am pretentious. I will post Chapter 1 by Friday of this week. After that, I shall try to keep my schedule consistent. I may not always succeed, but unlike with Hunter/Killer, I am starting out ahead.

Thank you all for your patience. I hope you enjoy Disorder.

It sleeps
In the unplumbed depths;
In forgotten tombs where lie
Secrets ancient and unutterable,
Dark places that devour light
As fire blackens wood.

It watches
Sleek and predatory
And hungry like a shark,
Hidden beneath our vision; stirring
To the taste of order and drinking deep
To slake its horrid thirst.

It waits
In cacophonic torpor
For the stars to align at the
Appointed Hour, when madness will reign,
When the earth will tremble and split
And it will be reborn.

It sleeps,
And it dreams of ruin.

Disorder

There are terrible things in the dark, things that hate us, that wish us ill. But the most terrible things are those with agendas so utterly alien, so completely monstrous, that they deny us any significance at all.

Prologue

They were close. Outside the house. He knew it, he could feel them near. The worst part was that he couldn't see them. He could never see them. He could hear them: their taunting, wordless whispers; the rustle of hurried footsteps through the dry grass outside his windows. But he couldn't see them. How long had they been following him? A few weeks? They'd harried him to the point of near insanity. Driven his wife and children away. Gotten him fired from a job he'd held for fifteen years. And he'd never so much as seen their faces.

He moved to the window above the kitchen counter and peered out over the nightscape of his front lawn. It was brown and matted from weeks of neglect. Overgrown hedges shuddered in the wind. No one. Nothing. They had to be there. He'd just heard them and if they weren't there—where were they? If he could just see them…maybe he could talk to them, reason with them. Maybe they wouldn't be so fearful.

There was a sensation like a gentle breath on the back of his neck, a glint of movement at the edge of his vision and he spun around with a startled cry. A gaunt shadow darted out of view. Light footfalls sounded on the hardwood floor. His heart raced and he felt his stomach contract as adrenaline poured into his system.

They were inside.

He grabbed the first weapon he could find, a long knife resting on the Formica counter-top, and held it menacingly out in front of him. He slowly backed up into the corner of the kitchen as the whispers built to crescendo. He could almost understand them now, almost make out the words. He strained his ears, despite his terror, because he needed to know.

"We want it."

The whispered voice felt like it came from just inches away. He gasped and dropped to the floor, looking about frantically as he pressed himself further into the corner. Want what? What did they want? He couldn't think of anything he wouldn't give them just to make this stop.

"What do you want?" he screamed into the night as a panicked tear rolled down his cheek. There was no answer, and he began to cry. He hadn't cried since he was fourteen years old. He furiously wiped away the tears with his left hand while clutching the knife close to him with his right.

The shadows around the square of moonlit floor shifted and drew in, closing around him. Silhouettes of long arms and lean bodies danced in and out of the light to the rhythm of the soft thuds and floorboard creaks. He pulled his knees up and hugged his arms around his chest, his grip on the knife now white-knuckled.

"Please just tell me what you want," he whimpered.

"We want it."

The sound went through his body like a shock. This whisper was louder. Closer. Every muscle tensed. He couldn't take it anymore, not seeing them, not knowing what they wanted, but he was too terrified to get up and chase after them. He had to do something, but he couldn't find the strength. He started to sob uncontrollably.

A pale, long-fingered hand stretched towards him out of the darkness and he recoiled, pressing himself further into the corner as he struggled through shuddering breaths. The thing stepped into the moonlight, tall and impossibly thin, ivory-skinned and draped in charcoal cloth.

He looked up at its face.

It did not have one.

He screamed.

Other creatures, like the first, came into the light around their leader, their furtive whispers all the more terrifying for their lack of mouths. They seemed to plead with the first one, their gestures and movements submissive but expectant as they begged it for something. The leader held its eyeless gaze on him. It made a gesture and the lesser creatures became silent, turning their featureless heads to the man bawling in the corner.

The leader stepped lightly forward and extended a long finger, pointing at the man's abdomen.

"We want it."

A heavy feeling shot through the man's stomach as he felt the thing inside of him. He didn't remember...yes...he had felt it there before. It had never seemed like anything, or bothered him—that's why he hadn't thought about it. Or had he? Had it been there? Yes, it had to have been. That's the only thing that made sense.

He finally understood. His tears stopped as he realized what he had to do.

He drove the knife into his own stomach and cut a wide gash. He barely felt it. The alien things looked on silently, their whispers having died. He cut and hacked within himself and dropped the knife to the floor. He pushed his hand into the warm and bleeding remnants of his intestines, feeling around, exploring his innards for what was out of place. His lap grew wet from the blood and excrement seeping from the wound.

He found it, seconds later, a grey bag with a fleshy texture, covered in his blood. He tore it from himself and held it up to the creatures. They were nowhere to be found.

As his vision dimmed he began to feel the pain, and he realized that he had just made a terrible mistake.

Dean pulled on his jeans as he stumbled out of the bathroom, hair still wet from the shower. He found Sam wide awake, sitting up in his bed with the blue comforter bundled tightly around him, staring at the screen of the laptop in front of him.

"Latest news from Jeremiah, Nebraska: a middle-aged man disembowels himself in his own home." Sam looked up at Dean with those glinting 'I told you so' eyes. When his eyes flashed like that he looked almost ridiculously young, like a ten-year-old with prepubescent gigantism.

"Suicides happen all the time," Dean dismissed as he wriggled into a shirt. "Now get your clothes on, we're headed to Oregon."

"Not in Jeremiah," Sam replied, ignoring Dean's order. "There's like, 11,000 people there. Four months into the year and they've already had five times the suicides they had all of last year."

"So that's what, a total of five?" Dean snarked. Sam looked at him annoyedly and Dean realized, with not a little pleasure, that he was right. "Maybe it's been rainy and everybody is depressed."

"But they're not just suicides. They're weird suicides. You want to kill yourself, you jump off a bridge or shoot yourself in the head. The guy who disemboweled himself? They found him holding his own kidney." Sam looked back up at Dean with an incredibly inappropriate grin. He was like a puppy that had somehow been trained to bring home the most disgusting things he could find. Dean resisted the urge to smack him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper.

"Sometimes weird stuff happens. It doesn't mean something supernatural is going on." Dean hardened his face, hoping Sam would take the hint. "There's a real ghost thing happening in Oregon—"

"That's over a thousand miles away! Jeremiah's maybe a hundred and twenty." He looked up at his brother pleadingly, and when Dean found himself unable to immediately refuse, Sam took the initiative, speaking quickly and excitedly. "The last guy, the guy I told you about yesterday? Smacked his head against a brick wall like fifteen times before the hemorrhaging killed him. The woman before him locked herself in a closet until she died of dehydration…"

"Fine!" Dean shouted. "Fine, Sam. We'll stop there for one day. See what we can find. Okay?"

Sam smiled at him and nodded as he rolled out of bed and started putting on his clothes.

"Wipe that stupid little smirk off your face before I flatten it."

"I'd like to see you try, shorty." Sam leaned over and patted his older brother's head, some four inches lower than his own. Dean slapped the hand away.

"Hey, stretch. I'm average, you're the freak."

"I'm sorry, you'll have to speak louder, I can't hear you way up here." Sam turned away from Dean as he fastened his jeans, but Dean could practically see the smugness, and he was not in the habit of tolerating sass. He leapt forward and tackled Sam, slamming him face-first into the ground.

"Ow! Ow! Fuck! Ow!" Sam whined as Dean punched him in the ribs, over and over again. "Dude! Sneak attacks aren't cool! Agh!"

"It's like the Boy Scouts, bitch. 'Be Prepared.'" He laced an arm around Sam's neck and applied the choke. Sam struggled uselessly against the hold while Dean squeezed. It was several seconds before Sam reached out a hand and tapped the floor twice to submit.

Dean loosened his grip and Sam coughed. Dean continued: "I mean, calling me short and then turning your back? How stupid are you?"

He released his brother and stood. Sam rolled over and Dean offered his hand, smirking condescendingly. Sam glared at him, embarrassed and vengeful, and got to his feet on his own.

Dean made a mental note not to turn his back on Sam for several days.